How Specific Can Facebook Ad Targeting Get?

Facebook Ads is a marketing technique which we suggest to a lot of our clients, and this is for a good reason. The targeting options and the ad formatting gives you so much freedom for exactly who you target and what ad you show them.

What are Facebook Ads?

Facebook Ads are entwined on our newsfeeds with the organic posts that we may see from friends. These adverts can appear in different places across the Facebook and Instagram platforms as well as some third-party apps and websites.

You will pay Facebook for every link click or impression your ad receives. You can set a daily budget, and Facebook will keep showing your ad every day until this budget is met (there is a minimum of £5 per day budget).

Core Targeting Options

Facebook offers a few different options for targeting your audience, but the most commonly used is the ‘Core Targeting’ options.

You can choose to target one location or a number of locations of interest to your audience or where they live. As well as this you can choose the gender and age range of your audience.

The behaviours that take place on Facebook can be targeted, such as:

The ads they have previously clicked.

The apps they use.

Pages liked or engaged with on Facebook.

You can then go on to target your audience more directly, by targeting characteristics or demographics for your audience. These can be things like life events, education, work statuses and interests.

Finally, as well as targeting the behaviours that a user completes on Facebook, you can also target a range of user behaviours that are not directly linked to their time on Facebook.

Recently this feature has become more limited due to GDPR and the decline in the use of third-party data; you can read our blog about this topic here, to find out more about the features that have been removed.

Some of the behaviours which you can still target using this platform are:

Their mobile device, g. Apple or Android.

The average time spent on this device.

Their purchase behaviour.

Whether they commute or not.

Their travel habits, g. are they a frequent traveller?

Excluding and Narrowing Your Audience

In addition to being able to target a specific audience, you can also use the same features in order to exclude people from your audience; this may be a certain area in your targeted location or people with a specific interest.

You can make your audience even more specific and targeted by narrowing your audience. This means that the people will have to meet more of the criteria before being added to your audience.

Remarketing and Lookalike Audiences

The other targeting methods for Facebook Ads are the Remarketing and Lookalike Audience features. Both are extremely useful for producing results.

Remarketing involves adding a Facebook Pixel to your website; this will track everyone who visits your website and will then compile a list of these users. Facebook then uses this automatically updated list as the audience to show your ads.

You can add certain functions so that a user will be added to the list if they view a certain page or product. This is a great way to target people who are already interested in your website.

Lookalike Audiences is a great tool for most businesses and can produce amazing results. This feature allows you to upload your email list of existing customers; then Facebook will produce a list of people who are similar to your customers.

They look at the demographics, interests and information that they have on your email list to find people who are similar to these people. You can choose the size of the list which you want Facebook to produce; a smaller audience will mean that they are closer in comparison to your customers.

This means that you can closely target people who are most like your “ideal customer” and therefore more likely to want or need your services, producing a high conversion rate.

With these targeting options, it isn’t hard to understand why we recommend Facebook Ads so often but also why people love to use this Ad platform.

Over 80% of people with an internet connection has a Facebook account so you won’t be short of people to target!

If you are interested in learning more about how Facebook Ads could increase your sales, or you want to start running some targeting ads for your business, get in touch todayor call 01392 349580. We look forward to achieving the results which you want!

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Tierney Crocker Tierney Crocker is part of the Digital Marketing team at WNW Digital, involved in all aspects of digital marketing and social media. You can email her at tierney@wnwdigital.co.uk